Ivaylo Vassilev

Seventeen when he took first prize at the Pancho Vladigerov International Piano Competition in Sofia in March 2025, Ivaylo Vassilev was born in the city in 2007 and has studied at the National Music School with Emilia Kaneva and then Borislava Taneva, with periods of work alongside Ludmil Angelov and Konstantin Scherbakov. Youth competitions in Europe, Asia and the United States have brought him more than thirty prizes; a recording of concertos by Mozart and Shostakovich followed his success at the television competition The Nutcracker in 2018. In 2024 he crossed the United States with the Sofia Philharmonic, playing Beethoven's Third and Fifth Concertos night after night. He also plays the viola and writes music of his own. In 2023, at fifteen, he played with the Plovdiv orchestra at the March Music Days in Ruse and participated in the Cliburn Junior festival. The American tour took in eighteen concerts and a recital in Florida, in halls from the Peabody Auditorium to the Lehman Center in the Bronx and the State Theatre in New Jersey. He won the Crystal Lyre as young musician in 2021 on the Sofia Philharmonic's nomination, has taken the Grand Prize of the Dimitar Berbatov Foundation three times, and has twice been honoured by the Ministry of Culture.